The
pretense that a president of a modest country like Kyrgyzstan can play
in big league politics is shed with the ouster of the tulip
revolutionary president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, after last week's riots in
the capital Bishkek that left 81 dead and government buildings and
Bakiyev's various houses trashed.

Bakiyev tried to have the
best of both big power worlds, last year brashly threatening to close
the US airbase, vital to the war in Afghanistan, after signing a cushy
aid deal with Russia, and then reversed himself when the US agreed to
more than triple the rent to $60 million a year and kick in another
$100m in aid. As a result he lost the trust of both, and found himself
bereft when the going got tough last week, as riots exactly like those
that swept him to power erupted.

It
was the US that was there in 2005 to help him usher in a new era of
democracy and freedom, the "Tulip Revolution", but this time, it was
Russia who was there to help the interim government coalition headed by
opposition leader and former foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva pick up
the pieces. As Otunbayeva looks to Kyrgyzstan's traditional support for
help extricating itself from a potential failed-state situation, cowed
and frightened US strategists are already advocating trying to convince
the Russians that the US has no long-term plans for the region, and
that they can work together. Recognising the obvious, writes Eric
McGlinchey in the New York Times,
" Kyrgyzstan is in Russia's backyard, and the fact that we depend on
our airbase there for our Afghan war doesn't change that. Presenting a
united front with Russia, however, would help Washington keep its air
base and avoid another bidding war."

Reversing
Bakiyev's flip-flop, Otunbayeva first indicated the US base would
remain open, then hours later, sent shock waves through the US
political establishment by reversing herself and saying it would be
closed "for security reasons". The agreement was renewed last June and
is due for renewal in July this year. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton immediately telephoned Otunbayeva and sent Assistant Secretary
of State Robert Blake to Bishkek, who announced with relief that the
base would remain open after all.

But, unlike Bakiyev,
Otunbayeva is no crafty politician out to fill her and her family's
pockets. While the former put his son Maxim in charge of negotiating
the lucrative rental deal with the Americans last year (just where did
the $160m go?) and set him up as head of the new national Central
Agency for Development, Investment, and Innovation, Otunbayeva is above
the corrupt clan-based politics of her predecessors. A graduate of
Moscow State University and former head of Kyrgyz State National
University philosophy faculty, she was foreign minister under both
Askar Akayev and Bakiyev. She served as the first Kyrgyz ambassador to
the US and Canada, and later the UK, and in 2007, was elected to
parliament on the candidate list of the Social Democratic Party,
becoming head of the opposition SDP in October 2009.

She
visited Moscow twice this year, in January and March, and has forged
close links with the United Russia Party. Her first formal talks as
interim president were with Putin. Her flop-flip rather reflects the
serious strain that the pushy US has put on Kyrgyz society, which until
9/11 was a sleep backwater which admired and was grateful to Russia for
its security and economic well-being. There can be no doubt that the
Kyrgyz people would much prefer good relations with Russia than the US.
The base has provided nothing to the surrounding community except for
the transitting soldiers' purchase of alcohol and their soliciting of
prostitutes.

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For
all his antidemocratic behaviour, Bakiyev's threat to close the base
last year was in response to public pressure. Locals were furious that
a US solider killed an unarmed Kyrgyz
outside the base and was whisked back to the US without any
repercussions, much like the recently exposed case of US soldiers in a
helicopter who gunning down two unarmed Reuters news staff in Baghdad,
but who were cleared by a military investigation. This resentment and
the instability it encourages are what Otunbayeva was alluding to in
her terse phrase "security reasons".

So, the question on
everyone's lips: did Russia pull the strings this time, tit for tat?
True, there was little love lost between Putin and Bakiyev after the
latter reneged on his promise to close the American base last year.
Bakiyev's erratic behaviour in the past two years certainly irritated
the Russians. Apart from the issue of the US base, ties between the
Kremlin and Bakiyev's government had deteriorated sharply in recent
months, in part because of the government's increasingly anti-Russian
stance, including the blocking of Russian-language websites and
increased discrimination facing Russian businessmen. Coincidentally,
Russia imposed duties on energy exports to Kyrgyzstan on 1 April.

When
Otunbayeva suggested the base would be closed, there were cries that
the Kremlin was behind the coup. But this speculation was nixed by
Obama himself. "The people that are allegedly running Kyrgyzstan ...
these are all people we've had contact with for many years. This is not
some anti-American coup, that we know for sure," assured Michael
McFaul, Obama's senior director for Russian affairs, as Obama and
Medvedev were smiling for the cameras in Prague in their nuclear
disarmament moment. He also dismissed the immediate assumption that it
was "some sponsored-by-the-Russians coup," claiming -- appropriately
for the occasion -- that cooperation over Kyrgyzstan was another sign
of improved US-Russia relations.

Diligence
LLC analyst Nick Day, "Russia is going to dominate Kyrgyzstan and that
means problems for the US." Yes, and so what? Russia is just a
heart-beat away from events throughout the ex-Soviet Union by
definition. Russians and Russian-sympathisers come with the territory.
In early March, a member of the Council of Elders and head of the
Pensioners' Party, Omurbek Umetaliev, said, "We believe it is
unacceptable to allow the existence on this limited territory of
military bases from two leading world powers, which have conflicting
positions on many issues of international politics. Although the
presence of a Russian military base in Kyrgyzstan is historically
justified, the military presence of the US and NATO countries is a
threat to our national interests."

True,
even the threat to close the base is a blow to US imperial strategy in
Eurasia, especially its surge in Afghanistan, which would be seriously
jeopardised without its Manas air base. The US resupplies 40 per cent
of forward operating bases in Afghanistan by air because the Taliban
control the main roads. 1,500 US troops transit Manas each day --
50,000 in the past month, with 1,200 permanently stationed there.
Because of attacks on its supply convoys travelling through Pakistan,
the Pentagon wants to shift much of its resupply effort to its new
Northern Distribution Network, which runs through Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Paul Quinn-Judge, Central Asia
director of the International Crisis Group -- reporting from Manas --
said the fear was that such stepped-up US shipping will lead to attacks
by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Islamic Jihad
Union, groups which have a loyal following in the restive Ferghana
valley, which is divided among those very Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan, and has witnessed more than one uprising
in the recent past. "The problem with the Northern Distribution
Network is obvious," Quinn-Judge says. "It turns Central Asia into a
part of the theatre of war."

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Confusion over the status of the US
base will be top on United States President Barack Obama's crammed
agenda now and he would do well to look further than the next wilted
flower coup. "In Kyrgyzstan there should be only one base -- Russian,"
a senior Russian official told reporters icily in Prague. "Russia will
use this as a lever in negotiations with America," frets Day.

But
another way to look at this is that this is a golden opportunity for
Obama to definitively reverse the cowboy politics of Bush and the
neocons, to build some real bridges with Russia, the country which will
remain vital to Kyrgyzstan whatever geopolitical phantasms Washington
has in mind. The delicious irony in the Kyrgyz coup is that as Medvedev
and Obama were posing in Prague, where Russia basically acceded to US
missile defence diktat, geopolitical inertia in Kyrgyzstan was doing
Russia's work for it, scuttling US Eurasian plans, and putting the
cards back in Russia's hands.

And
what is this nonsense about how "vital" this base is to the US? It's
been there ten years. Just how long does it expect to stay? Could the
answer be "For ever"? The current Kyrgyz line is that the agreement
will be reviewed to make sure it isn't "against the interests of the
people or for bribes", government spokesman Almazbek Atambayev said
after a visit to Moscow. "The United States plans to withdraw troops
from Afghanistan next year. We will approach the transit centre issue
in a civilised way and resolve it with the US leadership." So the US
probably has another year there with grudging Russian approval.

Eric writes for Al-Ahram Weekly and PressTV. He specializes in Russian and Eurasian affairs. His "Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games" and "From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization" are available at (more...)